Meanwhile, back in the necropolis...

Friendly robin, where was I?  Oh, yes, I was talking about Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and what I did there on Monday.  I was also talking about esteemed correspondent and honorary niece Elizabeth McClung, and she saw what I had posted, and among other things commented to me, "I really like your cemetery, though it must be THE most un-f*cking-accessible cemetery I have every seen.  What, do you need a hovercraft wheelchair to get there?"

Funny she should mention that, because that was one of the things I wanted to talk about next.  I also wanted to point out some other amusing little tidbits and prettinesses.  But let's talk about the accessibility issue first.

Though still an active cemetery today, with new residents being interred every month, this is nevertheless a nearly 200-year-old burial site, laid and expanded over several small hills, and also in the spaces in between.  It's very natural, very beautiful, and also a bona fide historic place in Massachusetts.

Those of you in wheelchairs can guess what all that means for you as potential visitors.  Yes.  Accessibility is a problem in many, many parts of the park, and this is not likely to change any time soon.  However, everything in the park is not completely out of reach, and some things are very accessible.

I'm going to show you some moderately rough to impossible parts first, just to get them out of the way and give a full sense of the range of challenges in this park for people with limited mobility.  Let's start with a look at the main place I visited, Authors Ridge, where all the Transcendentalist authors are buried.  I accidentally (but without regret) came at it through essentially the back door.

And that was also the long way.  There is another way, a far more direct way, and most likely the only way if you are using a wheelchair. (Click to enlarge.)

This is a nicely paved, wide, well kept path with a banister a couple feet high on at least one side all the way down.  There's just this one problem.

Yeah, it's f*cking steep.  This part here isn't so bad, but you see that sharp lefthand turn up ahead?  Well, this next picture shows how that part of the nicely paved and banister-ed trail looks about half or two-thirds of the way down, assuming you don't get there ass over ears.

This next picture shows the view to the bottom from about where I shot before I clambered down this more vertical branch of the path -- clinging to the rail all the way, I might add, because of course I didn't have a walking stick with me, because what would an adventure of mine be without hubris? (Click to enlarge.)

It's really quite a way down that extremely steep bit.  And I'm not 100% sure there isn't a nice six-inch or higher step at the bottom instead of a ramped finish.  A moderately fit person using a prosthesis and/or a cane can use this path, as I have demonstrated, though I actually found it more challenging than hiking in the back way over cobbled paths, alternately grassy and gravelly slopes, and bare forest earth.  A determined person who is really an expert on crutches could probably do it, too, either way.  And a person in a wheelchair could also use this nice paved path -- if, as Elizabeth has suggested, the wheelchair could fly, or if the person in the wheelchair had a muscular manservant Sven or a few willing Japanese men to assist.  Or something.  Sure, I could probably push someone not very heavy up that slope, probably excruciatingly slowly, but I could not help them get back down; someone with both original legs and a lot of muscles could do better.  And I don't know how a motorized chair or scooter would do here, do you?

Now going from difficult to worse, I don't think anyone in a wheelchair OR scooter is likely to be able to lay flowers on the grave of Daniel Chester French any time soon.  One way up to it is the way I went down from it yesterday, when I discovered that cool thing my new foot can do.  Another way is a small set of rustic stone stairs.  There's one more way, and this is it:

Gorgeous, certainly.  But those are stairs at the end, and this is what this part of the pavement looks like up close.

This is what the unpaved part of the same path looks like in some places.

Lovely, all of it, and it is my pleasure to show it to you, especially those of you in wheelchairs who will not be able to see it for yourselves unless something changes drastically or unless you travel in glass-bottomed palanquins.  And for those of us who still walk but use alternative or supplementary equipment, it can still be quite challenging.  And now you know exactly how challenging.

But look, even though the graves probably of greatest interest to tourists are difficult to impossible for people with limited mobility to reach, it's not all bad or inaccessible.  There are roads coming in off the highway and running through the park on which cars drive every day, some of which are even wide enough for two cars to pass each other.  And mostly, they are broad, not too steep, and well kept.  For example, remember the lovely Melvin Memorial (by the now completely inaccessible French), in front of which I ate my sandwich? (Click to enlarge.)

Well, this is the bench I sat on, which is just tucked off to one side on the road leading down to her.

A moderately fit wheelchair user or a motorized chair or scooter user coming in off the street all alone could do this, and enjoy it I think, and accompanied by someone to help over the steeper bits could have quite a nice outing in the park at large, even without a personal stop at the graves of the Transcendentalists and their families.  You see, this is a very beautiful park, even without all the famous dead people and fancy tombstones.

The park is sprinkled carefully through these forested slopes, preserving as much of the woods as possible, and also maintaining the aspect of a cultivated garden, an aspect which I suspect is rooted (if you'll pardon the pun) in all the flowering plants with which mourners have graced family plots and the graves of their beloveds over so many years.  (Click to enlarge.)

All throughout you can see nature knitting itself into the architecture. (Click to enlarge.)

And speaking of buildings, there are all kinds of delicious examples of Victorian grief architecture, from the shamelessly sentimental to the most pompous.  Drapery!  There must be drapery!  Even if it doesn't make sense!  I mean, what is this atop this obelisk, a draped urn?  Seriously?

Some of it is both bold and exquisite.  I love this next tombstone very much.  Here is the lush, rich back --

-- and here is the front:

I can't quite make out who this gentleman was (and I assume it was a gentleman and not a lady), but I love the illusion of carved text that keeps running behind the carved drapery.  Oh, if only you could brush that drapery aside and read it all, but at least you know it is from "Isaia."  To the people who commissioned this stone and their contemporaries, in another day without television, radio or the internet but when most of the people who lived in Concord, Massachusetts, were churchgoers of one denomination or another who knew and could quote from the Bible as fluently as you and I might talk about, I don't know, the sitcom Friends, this is all the stone had to reveal, a legible phrase here and there and the simple citation "Isaia."

For our generations, apparently, things have to be spelled out a little more clearly.

Now that is sad.

Still more parts of the park tempted me than what I have shown you in these last three posts, but it was getting late and the sky was clouding over and threatening rain.  There is something stimulating about hurrying to get out of a graveyard before sunset, even if it is only because that's when the big black iron gates close and you've chained your ride to one of them.

Naturally, Hello Kitty and I made it out with plenty of time to spare.

And naturally, because all this has been at least partly about Elizabeth, just about the first things I saw when I got home were squirrel nipples.

No, squirrel nipples have nothing to do with wheelchair accessibility or Victorian grief architecture, but you will just have to trust me when I tell you that a photo of them is the perfect way to end this series.  Because it is.  Especially with such a cute little squirrel mama flashing them at us.

Comments

[em]

What a great tour. Thanks. And the squirrel nipples are perfect indeed. She probably ran back to her wool lined nest if she is any relation to the Toronto squirrels.

[Leslee]

Somehow I never got to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, even when I lived in Concord. Will have to check it out sometime.

And squirrel nipples. Now that's something I've never seen before, though I have seen baby squirrels chasing each other around a tree - very cute. Was mama squirrel looking for her babies?

Nice tour!

[Sugared Harpy]

Yes, there MUST be drapery. No matter what? YES! Don't question it. It's better that way.

I do love those kinds of things.

I would love to see this cemetery, gorgeous. Of course I would need a chaperone!

[Ian]

As an intrepid tourer of cemetaries I thank you for your post.

It reminded me of my two favourite cemetaries in the world: Mount Mariah in Deadwood, SD, USA & Pere Lachaise in Paris, France.

Cheers
Ian

[Sara]

I have never been to SD, but I have very fond memories of hot summer days spent in Père Lachaise. What PL has that this place does not, besides a slightly different roster of luminaries at rest including Morrison, Piaf, Chopin, and Moliére, are lots and lots of scroungy looking feral cats. Also, many of the tombs of PL are family mausolea which include tiny chapels, and while some are nicely kept, some are falling into right creepy disrepair. And they are all packed in very close together in a true urban environment, which makes PL much more a true necropolis than Sleepy Hollow. Sleepy Hollow is more like a necrovillage.